Higher Education Academy Fellowship

Abstract

Having a lifelong interest in knowledge and learning, I view the claims and practices of education and higher education practices with active and interested skepticism, which comes out of a profound optimism – that what we have now is not the best we could have. Higher education should always be in the best interests of the individual being educated, tempered by the interests of society at large; above all, education should do no harm. It seems to me that this “bottom up” approach, whereby improving the thinking abilities of individuals improves the behavior of whole societies is the primary reason for the expensive activity of education. Economic research indicates correlations between education and state prosperity (Berger and Fisher 2013) though benefits of increased productivity may not necessarily be equally distributed. Furthermore, the causal mechanisms at play are not finely elucidated.